Time to put climate change on the national agenda

John Kerry

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, August 9, 2006

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger met with more than a dozen top business officials to discuss climate change -- executives who have gathered in support of mandatory limits on greenhouse-gas emissions. Imagine that: Big Business stepping up to the plate, but the Bush administration refusing to take a seat at the table.

That's a conspicuous absence for a president who says that climate change "is a challenge that requires a 100-percent effort; ours and the rest of the world's." But it's not surprising for a president whose preferred policy is to rewrite science to protect oil-company profits at the expense of the general public.

Washington's climate policy is as real as its claim of "mission accomplished" in Iraq. But it is also the story of both major political parties at their worst -- ducking difficult choices, giving in to big donors, postponing reckoning until the day after tomorrow. If you offend no one, you change nothing. The world is changing, and now the reckoning is real.

Within the next decade, if we don't take meaningful action to address global warming, our children and grandchildren will deal with global catastrophe.

It's time to put Washington to the test. No more bite-sized ideas that tinker at the edges of outdated policy. It's time to put global-climate change at the top of the national agenda.

There are three big steps that are imperative to addressing global warming.

-- First, we must establish a mandatory program to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

-- Second, we must provide the incentives and resources to transition to a low-carbon economy.

-- Third, we must recognize that climate change is a global problem requiring a global solution.

Under President Bush, efforts to reduce U.S. emissions have been limited almost exclusively to voluntary activities. It's clear that the voluntary efforts are not getting the job done. The proof is in the numbers -- over the past several years, overall U.S. emissions have been on the rise. While voluntary programs can contribute to a domestic-climate change program, they cannot stimulate the global action that we know is necessary. Each year since 1992, the science has become more certain and Al Gore's summer movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," has brought the science home to Americans in a persuasive way.

So, what are we going to do about it? We need a plan that does what the science tells us we have to do. That's why I am introducing legislation to stop and reverse U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases. My bill establishes a mandatory cap-and-trade program to reverse emissions growth, starting in 2010. After that, we will progress to more rapid reductions and end at 65 percent below 2000 emissions by the year 2050. We have lost too much time for voluntary measures to be put to the test. We can't just set a mandate -- we have to provide incentives to businesses and industry to make the mandate achievable.

My bill also encourages the development, deployment and diffusion of new climate-friendly technologies. We know that we cannot solve the problem of global-climate change without new technologies, but new technologies don't just happen -- the market needs a signal and that signal needs to come from government.

Our gasoline-burning cars, for example, are the second-largest source of U.S. global-warming pollution. Americans will put more than 300 million new cars on the road during the next 20 years. If we give Detroit tax credits to retool their factories to build the best, most-efficient vehicles and give consumers tax credits to buy them, we'll take a big step toward solving global warming.

We know that clean-burning biofuels, made from plants, show great promise as a replacement for gasoline. A real federal commitment to renewable fuels would help reduce emissions and meet 30 percent of our fuel demands by 2020. Believe me, if we're spending $2 billion in Iraq in one week, we can commit $2 billion in funding for cellulosic biofuels during the next 10 years.

Finally, the United States is the world's single-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, but the United States alone cannot solve the challenge of climate change. It is going to take action from other countries -- both developed and developing. We must re-engage in discussions with the international community and work together to plan a path forward. We must do it now.

Carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere today are well beyond anything in the geological record -- going back 400,000 years. It is clear that the outdated policies that still drive our 21st-century economies have resulted in a dangerous interference with the global climate.

This is a time to take a stand. It's time to give our people back the truth, and give the world back its future.

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